1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of generating a simulation model, and in particular to a method of generating a simulation model used for timing verification of electronic circuits.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an exemplary case where the vendor and customer collaboratively create a product by making it possible to simulate it based on a circuit information having a standard format which has conventionally been used, simulation of operations of an electronic circuit may be available using a semiconductor integrated circuit provided from various manufacturers, wherein the circuit information of the above-described format is described according to a publicly-disclosed certain rule, so that the receiving party was capable of readily understanding, by decoding the circuit information, types of elements used for the semiconductor integrated circuit and connective correlation of the individual elements, which belong to design information such as know-how on the circuit design and trends in the development.
The vendor has to provide the circuit information of a functional block to the customer so as to allow the customer to perform the simulation. The customer designs an electronic circuit using the functional block and simulates it based on the circuit information of the functional block. Provision of the circuit design to the customer, however, raises a problem that information such as know-how on the circuit design, which is unwanted to be known to the others, can be obtained by the customer.
As one solution for the above-described problem, Patent Document 1 below takes a measure in which the circuit information is encrypted so as to keep the design information such as know-how on the circuit design or trends in the development secret.
[Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-171367
The circuit information per se, however, still remains even after the encryption, so that decryption of the crypt makes it possible to restore the original circuit information. Recent advancement in processing ability of computers and in network technology makes it possible to more readily decrypt the circuit information using a decryption key.
In the recent stream of scale-up of integrated circuit as a result of advancement in the circuit technology and wide spreading of IP (intellectual property), it has been also made clear that a single semiconductor circuit has a section whose circuit information has to be kept secret as an IP, and a section not always necessarily be kept secret.
An object of the present invention is, therefore, to provide a simulation model allowing gate simulation but is capable of keeping the circuit information on the functional block (IP) secret.